Game Freak brings a sleeper hit with tight control and a great concept to the Game Boy Advance.
There aren't many games where you get to play as an eight year old girl who becomes the leader of a gang of thieves when her dad is severely beaten up by guys who wear skull masks and use rollerblades. There also aren't many games where young girls drive gigantic mechanical machines to cause severe property damage while reclaiming stolen treasure.
Game Freak's Screw Breaker (or Drill Dozer everywhere else) features both of these things. And not surprisingly, thieves + property damage = fun.
The game is a platformer with a clever hook -- you control a robot called the Breakall Drillbot, which has two massive drills for arms. As you'd expect with any platformer, you can use the A Button to jump, but Screw Breaker lets you attack and interact by using the L Button to drill anti-clockwise, and the R Button to drill clockwise. Whenever you drill, a big gear and a time bar overlay on top of the whole screen (it sounds very intrusive, but it's actually fairly subtle).
Initially, you'll only be able to drill until the bar has filled up and drained down again, but you can increase your drill time by collecting gears. Once you have another gear, you can switch up by letting go and quickly pressing the current drill button you're using to switch up. This is made very intuitive by seeing the words "DRILL UP!" when you're able to switch a gear. Because of this, you'll be able to increase your drill time to allow you to drill through tougher bricks and attack enemies for longer periods of time. Unfortunately, any gears you earn break when you finish the level, so you must get them again in each level.
You wouldn't think that you could do all that much with a drill, but there's a surprising amount of creative uses for it in Screw Breaker. If you push forward when drilling a brick, for example, once you've finished drilling, you'll get a little 'boost' forward. This boost can be used to let you hook onto a brick in front of you that would otherwise be out of reach. The drill can also be used to wall jump by drilling into a brick, then reversing the rotation in mid-drill. A mid-air dash can also be performed by ducking and then pressing jump. These little tricks become particularly crucial in latter stages of the game, especially in the secret levels where the difficulty becomes particularly devious.
The levels in Screw Breaker are well-designed -- there's no place you can really get 'stuck.' It's clear that a lot of creativity has gone into the design, and that the levels have been tested thoroughly. There are assorted drill-specific obstacles for you to get through. Some of these include air ducts (red-coloured ones require you to drill with R to go forward, and blue ones require you to use L), boulders which hurtle towards you (you can't drill these if they're rolling down a slope, only flat ground will do), and clamps which hold onto your drill, let you gain speed and launch you into the air.
Boss battles are an absolute pleasure, with at least one in every level. From the possessed tree stump that grows a cactus tail to the grandma twins that pilot a submarine to the large police mech that throws a giant pair of handcuffs at you to the insanely large missile-hurling robot that takes up the entire screen and you must sabotage from the inside to destroy, each one is a real treat to battle. There are also mini-battles where the screen locks you in place and swarms of Skull Rollers or cops come charging at you until you manage to drill 'em all.
The game's soundtrack is excellent, featuring plenty of guitar and a suitably industrial feel for the majority of the game, which is appropriate as it mostly takes place in buildings and factories. Variations in the music including a spooky theme for a temple in the jungle, and an aquatic theme accentuated by bubbling noises. The game also features a fair bit of vocal effects - not speech, necessarily, but assorted grunts, cackles and chuckles from the supporting cast, which all help to give the game a bit more personality.
Although the Japanese version is entirely in Japanese, there's only two points in the game that are a little difficult due to the inability to read Japanese. The first is that you need to look for hints in an immediate area to a safe combination (although you can just read everything and look out for numbers in the text), and the second is that the game only explains instructions in Japanese, meaning that you mightn't know that you can hover by holding L when using the flying powerup in one level, which is essential for beating that level's boss. Aside from these two issues, it's all fairly straightforward.
Screw Breaker, simply put, is a fantastic game. It's the kind of creativity that can only escape from Japan, and yet with such a quirky design, it's surprisingly easy to pick up and play. The rumble cart is not overused, and enhances the experience. If you can't wait for the English release -- and that's perfectly understandable -- then pick it up from our partners at Lik-Sang. The Japanese version comes with a bonus mini-comic that tells the game's opening story!